Cézanne, Paul

Cézanne, Paul

Early Life and Work

From early childhood Cézanne was a close friend of Émile ZolaZola, Émile
, 1840–1902, French novelist, b. Paris. He was a professional writer, earning his living through journalism and his novels. About 1870 he became the apologist for and most significant exponent of French naturalism, a literary school that maintained that
..... Click the link for more information. , who for a time encouraged the painter in his work. Cézanne went to Paris in 1861; there he met PissarroPissarro, Camille
, 1830–1903, French impressionist painter, b. St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. In Paris from 1855, he came under the influence of Corot and the Barbizon school.
..... Click the link for more information. , who strongly influenced his development. He divided his time between Provence and the environs of Paris until his retirement to Aix in 1899. Cézanne's early work is marked by a heavy use of the palette knife, from which he created thickly textured and violently deformed shapes and scenes of a fantastic, dreamlike quality. Although these impulsive paintings exhibit few of the features of his later style, they anticipate the expressionist idiom of the 20th cent.

Through Pissarro, Cézanne came to know ManetManet, Édouard
, 1832–83, French painter, b. Paris. The son of a magistate, Manet went to sea rather than study law. On his return to Paris in 1850 he studied art with the French academic painter Thomas Couture.
..... Click the link for more information.  and the impressionist painters (see impressionismimpressionism,
in painting, late-19th-century French school that was generally characterized by the attempt to depict transitory visual impressions, often painted directly from nature, and by the use of pure, broken color to achieve brilliance and luminosity.
..... Click the link for more information. ). He was concerned, after 1870, with the use of color to create perspective, but the steady, diffused light in his works is utterly unrelated to the impressionist preoccupation with transitory light effects. House of the Hanged Man (1873–74; Louvre) is characteristic of his impressionist period. He exhibited at the group's show of 1874 but later diverged from the impressionist style and developed a firmer structure in his paintings.

Mature Work

Cézanne sought to "recreate nature" by simplifying forms to their basic geometric equivalents, utilizing contrasts of color and considerable distortion to express the essence of landscape (e.g., Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1885–87, Phillips Coll., Washington, D.C.), still lifes (e.g., The Kitchen Table, 1888–90, Louvre), and figural groupings (e.g., The Card Players, 1890–92; one version, S.C. Clark Coll., New York City). His portraits are vital studies of character, e.g., Madame Cézanne (c.1885; S. S. and V. White Coll., Ardmore, Pa.) and Ambroise Vollard (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris).

Cézanne developed a new type of spatial pattern. Instead of adhering to the traditional focalized system of perspective, he portrayed objects from shifting viewpoints. He created vibrating surface effects from the play of flat planes against one another and from the subtle transitions of tone and color. In all his work he revealed a reverence for the integrity and dignity of simple forms by rendering them with an almost classical structural stability. His Bathers (1898–1905; Philadelphia Mus. of Art) is the monumental embodiment of a number of Cézanne's visual systems.

The artist's later works are largely still lifes (among them his famous apples), male figures, and recurring landscape subjects. While retaining a solid substructure, they seem freer and more spontaneous and employ more transparent painterly effects than earlier works. Cézanne worked in oil, watercolor, and drawing media, often making several versions of his works.

Influence and Collections

Cézanne's influence on the course of modern art, particularly on the development of cubismcubism,
art movement, primarily in painting, originating in Paris c.1907. Cubist Theory

Cubism began as an intellectual revolt against the artistic expression of previous eras.
..... Click the link for more information. , is enormous and profound. His theories spawned a whole new school of aesthetic criticism, especially in England, that has ranked him among the foremost French masters. There are fine collections of his paintings in the Louvre; the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; and the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.

Bibliography

See M. Doran et al., ed., Conversations with Cézanne (new ed. 2001); his letters, ed. by J. Rewald (tr. 1941) and ed. by A. Danchev (tr. 2013); his drawings, ed. by A. Chappuis (1973); his watercolors, ed. by T. Reff (1963); catalogues raisonnés by A. Chappuis (2 vol., tr. 1973) and J. Rewald (2 vol., 1997); biographies by J. Lindsay (1969), J. Rewald (new ed. 1986), and A. Danchev (2012); studies by M. Schapiro (2d ed. 1962), W. Andersen (1970), S. Geist (1988), R. Fry (new ed. 1989), and F. Cachin et al. (1996).

Cézanne, Paul